The subject of fight choreography has come up a bit lately, so I have to ask, what are you guys' favorites?Obviously 'movie' and 'realism' don't really fit in the same sentence, but there are definitely more satisfying vs more irritating fight sequences out there. I'm always looking for recommendations, so any suggestions?Here are a few of my suggestions: For complete movies, one of my personal favorites is "The Yakuza" with Robert Mitchum. I also enjoyed the "Bourne" trilogy, "Time and Tide",The "Zatoichi" series, "Ong Bak", "Hero", "Fist of Legend", and the latest Bruce Willis "Live Free or Die Hard" which was hilarious.There are also particular moments in movies that were neat, though the rest sucked, but I'll leave those for now....

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It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first. Miyamoto Musashi.

"You see, it's not the blood you spill that gets you what you want, it's the blood you share. Your family, your friendships, your community, these are the most valuable things a man can have." Before Dishonor - Hatebreed

Hi Tom,Yes I do like "The Hunted", though I would probably put that in the "partial" category. The knife fight near the end is cool, but I have to confess the "hold on a minute whilst I fashion myself a blade over the campfire as I wait for my adversary" made my eyes roll a bit.

Peregrine,"The Mechanic" is awesome. Great ending!! I'll check out "Sha Po Lang", I like Donnie Yen. Apart from his Asian movies, he has an all too short sword fight in "Blade 2" which is also neat.

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It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first. Miyamoto Musashi.

Thanks Karsk, I've not seen the Cyrano Movie, looks like fun! and it brings to mind another favorite I forgot to mention earlier. "The Duelists".The book "By The Sword" by Richard Cohen, has an interesting section about the real sword experts that got involved in the movie business. It is also a fascinating read about the evolution of dueling and swordplay through the ages.

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It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first. Miyamoto Musashi.

what about newer/other MMA fighters or martial artists of the current generation who are in movies. i just seen "Judo" Gene Lebell on the Sarah Connors Chronicles. both Randy Couture and Gokor have been on the greatest show of all time, The Unit. and Tito is now a guest of the donald.

Call me stupid, but I watched all three (don't bother with #3) and never really saw any fighting. I remember rewinding and watching the fight sequences. They are rapid film cuts and sound effects coupled with some victim movement. Yes, the sound and scenes are gripping. To me, it looks as if editing technology made up for Bourne's disinterest in training in martial arts. Lucy Liu does a much better job.

Woof Sting, You are right on with Lucy Liu. Check out her new movie that is just out on DVD, RISE. There is another movie out that's called Eastern Promises it's a Britt film about the Russian mob, I don't know any of the actors. There is a fairly realistic fight that takes place in a bath house. Two hit men with hawkblade knifes take on a naked guy taking a steam. I don't know, but fighting butt naked would seem to be, well, awkward! P.C.

It always amazes me in these hong kong action flicks the cops always are using REVOLVERS.I love my revolvers...but 5-6shots in a .38spl doesn't compare to a glock or whatever with an extra magazine. I'm not sure if this is just for theatrics or that is their carry piece...a lot of movies the guns cyclinder opens and the rounds fall out adding to the suspense. If anyone knows i'd be curious on the Hong kong police carry? i haven't been to hong kong since 94.

1) The Seven Samurai ( I liked this movie for many reasons; the fight scenes looked real. They were not polished, but were gritty)

2) Last Hurrah for Chivalry ( I loved the fighting in this movie. It was not a fight for a fight's sake, but there was an actual story, and I cared about the people in the story even though they had faults)

Woof, I saw the new Jet Li flick, War. Some parts of the fight scenes were O.K. (What few there were.) But I caught a lot of what sting was saying about the Bourne movies cutting through the fights without showing much of anything actually happening. The movie was O.K. but I hope this isn't A new trend. For you choreographers out there ,hint hint. P.C.

The fight scene at the end of "Lethal Weapon" between Mel Gibson and Gary Busey. Any fight scene in "The Perfect Weapon" with Jeff Speakman. Fight scenes with Dan Inosanto on youtube, not with Bruce Lee. Parts from "The Hunted" also good.

Ok..I have to throw this in. The fight scene in Conan the Barbarian in the Orgy room. When the team is all done up in Camo and goes in am puts everyone to the sword and not to forget the battle at the mounds.

Its a hard question, most recently though, the one shot fight scene from the new Tony Ja film where he fights a whole street gang in a multistory nightclubTom yum goong or the Protector i think its called (Ive heard a few names for it)anyway very cool,he looks really tired by the end

There is a fantastic scene in a butcher's shop, where the staff all attack him with cleavers.

Not forgetting the part where he beats up an entire pool hall full of hoodlums (using only a pool ball wrapped in a scarf) and then beats up Dan Inosanto (character name "Sticks") in a fight with pool cues.

I was told that Simo Paula subbed in for Seagal's hands because his hands are on the tiny side for a man. I didn't know that she played Guro Dan's hands in that POV shot. If you could clarify the specifics as you know them, Guro Crafty, I would appreciate it. I know that scene is on YouTube, so I'll look it up later today. I don't remember the POV shift. All I remember is Seagal shouting, "Anybody seen Richie?"

Aaah, the early Seagals .... those were the days. I think I prefer "Above The Law", though I also have a strange fondness for "Marked for Death" and of course Tommy Lee Jones makes "Under Siege" worth the wait for the last knife fight.

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It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first. Miyamoto Musashi.

I know it's weird talking about this movie cause it's my username. But that's cause it's such a rocking film.

Has anyone here also seen the Hammer fight from Oldboy ? There are no camera cuts the whole fight and it's one of the dirtiest, grittiest, most awesome movie fight scenes I have ever seen in my life. I am yet to see a cooler fight scene in a movie ( or even a cooler movie overall ).

Couple of other interesting blade fights I remember apart from the greats already mentioned above.A large portion of my Experience in 'the Arts' are Aiki-arts and I absolutely adore Seagal Sensei's outside slip against linear/ angle 1/4 attacks and the kote-gaeshi/ irimi-nage throws/ Atemi Strikes/ Arm breaks as the key follow up.This added with tai-sabaki.Major motion events in this regards would be: 1. Under Siege II 2. Nico/ Hard to Kill 3. MFD 4. Who can forget the Parking Lot scene in 'The Glimmer Man' when he pulls out a Swiss Army Card knife edge from his wallet and slashes three people in one motion !!!

Among his recent DVD releases (He doesn't get a good character anymore but he has to feed himself anyways ) 1. The katana climax in 'Out of Reach'. 2. The knife climax in 'the foreigner'.

Mark Dacascos is another favorite of mine so other couple of blade picks for me would be: 1. American Samurai 2. The Crying Freeman

There are some pretty good fighting scenes out there now.Almost of of Donnie Yen's stuff is top notch from his classical kung fu to his MMA, if MA truly looked like that, it would be a wonderful world indeed !The Bourne trilogy is quite excellent, giving the viewer that "chaotic" felling of being in the action, though some don't like that because its hard to follow the moves.Lone Wold and Cub probably has some of the best sword work on any samurai series.The early Seagal movies were great, then he became the Pilsbury Dough-boy and, well...The Hunted with benicio and Jones was great, and the Hunted with Lambert has a very cool Samurai VS ninja fight in a train.The Highlander series with Adrian Paul had some good sword work and great H2H stuff, Adrian was a Hung Ga guy if I recall correctly.Jet Li's stuff can border on poetic at times.

And talking about poetic weapons/ blade choreography, I badly missed CTHD- which started all this and the fabulous "Hero" *ing Jet and Donny.The Li-Yen sword/ spear fight is one of the most nicely choreographed/ cinematographed piece of work I've ever seen ..

I enjoyed "Hero" also. My favorite move is the switch to back grip during the assassination attempt on the Emperor, where 'Broken Sword' pulls the cut at the last moment. I've seen my teacher use that very same move during sparring .

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It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first. Miyamoto Musashi.

firearms are illegal in HK... so in theory, there are no guns in their society... i dont know how much of the movies is reality where all the bg's go around with automatics.... but revolvers are standard issue

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loads of good movies/fight scenes? where to begin?

Oldboy

i loved the oldboy hallway fight, not so much because of the hammer, but cos of the boxing. although it was brief, it was very cool. and the rest of the movie is good, but not in the martial sense... 2 twist endings... one is predictable, the other caught me off-guard.. wanted to post so oldboy would know he wasn't the only one to watch this great movie... but if you want to watch it for the fight, then just watch the youtube link...if you want a good movie with twist ending... or want a revenge movie, give this a try

Tom Yum Goong/The Protector

although Ong Bak/Thai Warrior was good (i believe Tony Jaa was trained by Col. Amnat Poosiruk in the old Thai bareknuckle arts as well as Krabi Krabong), and the no-cut/one-take restaurant fight scene (i'm thinking it may be homage to Bruce Lee's Game of Death although i could be wrong -- if kill bill came out before the protector, maybe it was homage to quentin tarantino and kill bill?) was awesome.... i absolutely loved the tony jaa vs 50 guys and he breaks their arms and legs! if you look carefully, the 'form'/kata tony jaa does in the beginning of the movie, contain all the arm and leg breaks he does in this penultimate fight of the movie

Fist of Legend

my fave scene was the fight between jet and the japanese sensei... both learned from each other after having the techniques used against them in that fight and within the same fight they used the techniques that was used against them.

Throwdown (dir. Johnnie To's homage to Akira Kurosawa)

this was more a movie about redemption than it was about judo, although judo was the vehicle for the protagonist to get redemption... although not really martial arts action, check out Johnnie To's The Mission (unrelated to hollywood movie of the same name with Robert DeNiro and music by the great Ennio Morricone)... there is one scene in the mall... that was all Kurosawa... the "motion in stillness".... anyway, what is the name of the technique that tony leung ka fai does? step over shoulder lock? sweet... and Johnnie To has mentioned it in an interview that Throwdown was indeed homage to Kurosawa... especially Kurosawa's The Judo Saga, which were among Kurosawa's first movies

Donnie Yen

he was also in the forgettable Highlander 4

in his SPL (sha po lang), he imo, reinvigorated the fight scenes in HK movies. his collapsible baton vs dagger/knife of wu jing was an awesome fight... and donnie using judo/bjj/mma techniques in his fight scenes makes for something new and exciting to hong kong fight movie fans

Flashpoint was beyond awesome!

Lucy Liu

around the time of her movie with antonio banderas -- ballistic - ecks vs sever... in an interview she has said she studies kali.

Brandon Lee in Showdown in Little Tokyo... especially his fight in the factory, he rips a guard rail off and uses it as a single stick vs the bad guy's staff... Rapid Fire showed his potential to be an action star... was Jeff Imada (who i believe was close friends with Brandon) the choreographer? of course the fight vs Prof Al Leung featuring the trapping was unforgettable

going oldschool on you all lol:

heroes of the east aka shaolin vs ninja

gordon liu (aka master killer aka pak mei, priest in kill bill, aka johnny (leader of crazy 88's) in kill bill, marries a japanese bride, she practices JMA and he makes a comment to her about it and she sends a letter home and her sensei and brothers mistook it and sends their JMA experts to challenge gordon.

five venoms gang in northern shaolin vs southern shaolin aka invincible shaolin aka unbeatable dragon -- lo mang, the muscle-guy of the group, does southern praying mantis.... the scene where he does the fingertip handstand pushups with eggs under his hands always cracks (no pun intended) me up... his facial expression when he says 'eggs again?' gets me everytime... the slender venom that was slightly effeminate in this movie, played the son of the souther shaolin teacher, and was sent to learn yung chun aka wing chun

ti lung in kung fu instructor -- the plot is a ripoff/homage to akira kurosawa's yojimbo... if you haven't seen yojimbo, you may know the plot as sergio leone/clint eastwood's a fistful of dollars or david carradine's the warrior and the sorceress or bruce willis in walter hill's last man standing -- great staff training scenes

will post some more when i think of them....loong day at work, needed to post to unwind lol

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"A good stickgrappler has good stick skills, good grappling, and good stickgrappling and can keep track of all three simultaneously. This is a good trick and can be quite effective." - Marc "Crafty Dog" Denny

firearms are illegal in HK... so in theory, there are no guns in their society... i dont know how much of the movies is reality where all the bg's go around with automatics.... but revolvers are standard issue

--------------------------------------

loads of good movies/fight scenes? where to begin?

Oldboy

i loved the oldboy hallway fight, not so much because of the hammer, but cos of the boxing. although it was brief, it was very cool. and the rest of the movie is good, but not in the martial sense... 2 twist endings... one is predictable, the other caught me off-guard.. wanted to post so oldboy would know he wasn't the only one to watch this great movie... but if you want to watch it for the fight, then just watch the youtube link...if you want a good movie with twist ending... or want a revenge movie, give this a try

Tom Yum Goong/The Protector

although Ong Bak/Thai Warrior was good (i believe Tony Jaa was trained by Col. Amnat Poosiruk in the old Thai bareknuckle arts as well as Krabi Krabong), and the no-cut/one-take restaurant fight scene (i'm thinking it may be homage to Bruce Lee's Game of Death although i could be wrong -- if kill bill came out before the protector, maybe it was homage to quentin tarantino and kill bill?) was awesome.... i absolutely loved the tony jaa vs 50 guys and he breaks their arms and legs! if you look carefully, the 'form'/kata tony jaa does in the beginning of the movie, contain all the arm and leg breaks he does in this penultimate fight of the movie

Fist of Legend

my fave scene was the fight between jet and the japanese sensei... both learned from each other after having the techniques used against them in that fight and within the same fight they used the techniques that was used against them.

Throwdown (dir. Johnnie To's homage to Akira Kurosawa)

this was more a movie about redemption than it was about judo, although judo was the vehicle for the protagonist to get redemption... although not really martial arts action, check out Johnnie To's The Mission (unrelated to hollywood movie of the same name with Robert DeNiro and music by the great Ennio Morricone)... there is one scene in the mall... that was all Kurosawa... the "motion in stillness".... anyway, what is the name of the technique that tony leung ka fai does? step over shoulder lock? sweet... and Johnnie To has mentioned it in an interview that Throwdown was indeed homage to Kurosawa... especially Kurosawa's The Judo Saga, which were among Kurosawa's first movies

Donnie Yen

he was also in the forgettable Highlander 4

in his SPL (sha po lang), he imo, reinvigorated the fight scenes in HK movies. his collapsible baton vs dagger/knife of wu jing was an awesome fight... and donnie using judo/bjj/mma techniques in his fight scenes makes for something new and exciting to hong kong fight movie fans

Flashpoint was beyond awesome!

Lucy Liu

around the time of her movie with antonio banderas -- ballistic - ecks vs sever... in an interview she has said she studies kali.

Brandon Lee in Showdown in Little Tokyo... especially his fight in the factory, he rips a guard rail off and uses it as a single stick vs the bad guy's staff... Rapid Fire showed his potential to be an action star... was Jeff Imada (who i believe was close friends with Brandon) the choreographer? of course the fight vs Prof Al Leung featuring the trapping was unforgettable

going oldschool on you all lol:

heroes of the east aka shaolin vs ninja

gordon liu (aka master killer aka pak mei, priest in kill bill, aka johnny (leader of crazy 88's) in kill bill, marries a japanese bride, she practices JMA and he makes a comment to her about it and she sends a letter home and her sensei and brothers mistook it and sends their JMA experts to challenge gordon.

five venoms gang in northern shaolin vs southern shaolin aka invincible shaolin aka unbeatable dragon -- lo mang, the muscle-guy of the group, does southern praying mantis.... the scene where he does the fingertip handstand pushups with eggs under his hands always cracks (no pun intended) me up... his facial expression when he says 'eggs again?' gets me everytime... the slender venom that was slightly effeminate in this movie, played the son of the souther shaolin teacher, and was sent to learn yung chun aka wing chun

ti lung in kung fu instructor -- the plot is a ripoff/homage to akira kurosawa's yojimbo... if you haven't seen yojimbo, you may know the plot as sergio leone/clint eastwood's a fistful of dollars or david carradine's the warrior and the sorceress or bruce willis in walter hill's last man standing -- great staff training scenes

will post some more when i think of them....loong day at work, needed to post to unwind lol

We seem to enjoy the same films.I am aware firearms are illegal in HK.Oldboy reminded me of what one motivated man can do with channeled aggression against overwhelming odds who are not like motivated. Pissed off and Payback. The ending disturbed me.

cool.. didn't mean to talk down at you if that was how you read it, it was not my intention. i havent been there in ages... it's my belief that police are armed with only revolvers because firearms are illegal.

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Oldboy reminded me of what one motivated man can do with channeled aggression against overwhelming odds who are not like motivated. Pissed off and Payback. The ending disturbed me.

agreed. and yes, normally i'm a wussy, i watched 2 takashi miike movies (ichi and audtion) and i am a wussy. oldboy was borderline for my tastes. if not for the hype of those 3 movies, i would've probably not watched them. a little extreme for me.

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what about inspirational training scenes?

almost all oldschool shaw brothers, non-shaw brothers movies of the late 70's and early 80's -- gordon liu in 36th chamber of shaolin aka master killer comes to mind as does oldschool jackie chan in snake in the eagle's shadow or durnken fist aka drunken master ... or what about the rocky movies?

on a diff note, re: martial application

donnie yen's first movie, drunken tai chi, was cool for me... at the time i was of the belief that tai chi was martial but in modern times was predominately practiced for health. having not officially taught it for martial applications, there were a few moves in that movie that showed me possible martial applications of the form.

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"A good stickgrappler has good stick skills, good grappling, and good stickgrappling and can keep track of all three simultaneously. This is a good trick and can be quite effective." - Marc "Crafty Dog" Denny

As a huge Dumas and Perez-Reverte fan, the fight scenes in Alatriste were very enjoyable to watch. Viggo Mortensen does the role of Alatriste justice, the dueling scenes are interesting as are the battle scenes...great movie all round!

this looks good... some of the fight scenes shows some of the applications of the forms (naturally). none of the flashy kicks from donnie, since it's wing chun. i like it so far.

trivia: director wong kar-wai (arthouse director of chungking express, fallen angels, in the mood for love, 2046, ashes of time, etc) is also working on a film about Yip Man... should be starring tony leung chiu-wai (hardboiled, bullet in the head, infernal affairs, hero, happy together, in the mood for love, etc)

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"A good stickgrappler has good stick skills, good grappling, and good stickgrappling and can keep track of all three simultaneously. This is a good trick and can be quite effective." - Marc "Crafty Dog" Denny